One of our volunteers, a regular reader of The Wall Street Journal, dropped off an article for me to read, and I'm sure glad she did.

It was about a program I have never heard of, and I've read a whole lot about World War II.

Jennifer Maloney writes in the Nov. 21 issue about a new book by Molly G. Manning called "When Books Went to War."

Seems that during World War II, big American publishing houses scoured their backlists for books that could be printed in paperback editions small enough for our troops to carry into combat. Ultimately, they printed 120 million miniature, light-weight paperbacks.

Thus was established the paperback niche, and thus was established an entrenched following of young male readers.

I am guessing there is no similar program for American troops on foreign soil these days.

I asked a Vietnam veteran what he and his buddies did for entertainment. He said they watched re-runs of the TV series "Combat."

The main article on my favorite blog, called Brain Pickings, last weekend was about a book by Pico Iyer that I really need to read and heed.

It's "The Art of Stillness," and Iyer's right. Stillness is definitely an art, one I have most assuredly not mastered, although I thought I might try in retirement.

I did try, but wasn't good at it, possibly because I didn't know how to do it.

Iyer sought out Leonard Cohen, the great musician, who became a nearly isolated monk to get away from it all/

But, he talked to others, too, and he has this observation:

"We’ve lost our Sundays, our weekends, our nights off – our holy days, as some would have it; our bosses, junk mailers, our parents can find us wherever we are, at any time of day or night. More and more of us feel like emergency-room physicians, permanently on call, required to heal ourselves but unable to find the prescription for all the clutter on our desk."

Isn't that true?

One place where you can, though, get away from it all: the Wimberley Village Library.

And it was through her that I discovered a, well, novel kind of novel.

One day she brought home from the school library a book that was written in such a way that the reader could choose paths to take to get to the ultimate resolution. So, there were several possible endings depending on the pathway you chose. And you could choose all of them one at a time, just for the heck of it.

Pretty neat, I thought.

Now I am reading about online games that do the same thing, and they are not animated, blow-'em-up, shoot-'em-up boy videos.

Using a program called Twine, girls are writing games that take players all kinds of places to find an ending, according to a story in The New York Times Magazine published Sunday by Laura Hudson.

Lots of traditional gamers are claiming these aren't games at all, but those build them claim they are.

I can't speak to that controversy.

I can just say that I find it encouraging that girls are getting into online activities that raise their profiles and, maybe, make them a little money.

Americans are spending about three hours per day on their mobile devices.

That's according to Flurry Analytics, a Yahoo company. The analysis was released today, and Library Journal summarized the findings.

What's most striking about the report: People are spending more time on mobile devices than watching television.

Remarkable.

Flurry Analytics said that they can't prove how much overlap is reflected in those numbers, but they suspect there's a lot. In other words, people use their mobile devices while they watch TV as well as when they walk, sit in meetings, ride on elevators, attend church and funeral services -- and, my own set of observations -- when they drive their cars.

I'd love to see a comparison between time spent on mobile devices and time spent reading books or newspapers.